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Walking into Don’s is a bit like walking into a New York pizzeria—and not just because of the huge cityscape poster directly above you. Sneaking in to grab a couple pizza pies on a Sunday afternoon, I was welcomed by a casual atmosphere and a friendly staff. And there’s always a bonus for any establishment with their own Italian market, including Italian coffee, pasta, sauces and sodas.

To start off, let me recommend a slightly different appetizer, the oven roasted olives—four varieties, cured and served with breadsticks. Even if you don’t eat them, the smell alone is worth it.

It’s sometimes difficult to gauge pizza (a pie is a pie some will say), but I jumped in with both feet, ordering two intriguing pizzas from the menu, although there is a certainly a “make it your way” option. The Sicilian Hit was a hit with me—sausage, pepperoni, think slices of meatballs, ham, four kinds of cheeses, basil and oregano. To contrast, I also ordered The Lucky Luciano—with roasted chicken, mushrooms, red peppers. Both were a dream. If there’s a criticism, sometimes, the toppings were so thick that it was too heavy for the slice. It’s a good problem to have.

For those non-pizza lovers (who’ve followed a friend into the store), Don’s also offers salads, calzones, stromboli and hoagies. True to the pizza parlor tradition, there’s also a dessert display with a wide variety of cakes and cannoli. Don’t tell the Italian Anti-Defamation League, but The Don may have a pizza you can’t refuse.

In addition to feeding loyal pizza fans and satisfying local Redskins fans, The Dons’ was able to make this a truly meaningful Christmas Eve, by collecting a healthy amount of donations for East Africa Missions. Owner Waleed Zarou is very active in missions and has participated regularly in missions trips to Kenya over the last decade, including one where he taught African locals how to make pizza. Part of the inspiration for this event is to bless the local community here and educate them about very serious needs worldwide.

Right now is a critical time in East Africa and the need for missions is very great! In addition to preaching the gospel message of Jesus Christ and building churches, donations also go to feed those in need. This last year has dealt a crushing blow to East Africa, particularly in Kenya, where political turmoil, rioting, and instability in the economy coupled with one of the worst droughts in years has brought a large part of the population to the brink of starvation.

If you would like to learn more or would like to make a donation, please visit The Dons’ Pizza in person.

The Dons Pizza will follow-up its Free Christmas Eve Dinner from 2008 with one for 2009!
From 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 24, the restaurant will offer any and all members of the community free dinner! The dinner is meant for whomever may like it, regardless of need. This year, a few members of the Redskins have committed to serve food!

The Dons Wood-Fired Pizza is located in the Cascades Marketplace (across from Starbucks).

Step up and eat the whole famiglia size thick Sicilian style pie with any 4 of your favorite toppings in less than 20 minutes.

If you pass the test, the pizza is on the house and you become a member of the family. We’ll put your picture on “Da Wall.”
If you blow it, then you pay the boss $24.99 and he’ll forgetaboutit.

The Pizza Challenge Pie is made Sicilian Style

This is an actual sampling of what the Pizza Challenge entails. The pie is roughly 2.5 pounds of dough plus toppings. The picture above is configured as a meat lovers style, but the challenge dictates any 4 toppings of your choosing.

Welcome to new website for The Dons’ Pizza. We’ve created it with the intent of being more interactive. You can subscribe to us using our RSS feed in order to keep updated. We will be featuring articles describing the various menu items and providing further insight.

The new website accompanies the release of the new menu, which is featured in our navigation bar.

Cascades’ Don Corleone’s Brick Oven Pizza will fill the bellies of area residents this Christmas Eve in a gesture of goodwill.

From 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 24, the restaurant will offer any and all members of the community free dinner. A local children’s choir will also provide a musical backdrop to the evening. The dinner is meant for whomever may like it, regardless of need.

Don Corleone’s Brick Oven Pizza is located in Cascades Marketplace at 21018 Southbank Street in Sterling. It can be reached at 703-444-4959.

Scott Miller Jr. – who turned 12 on May 21 — got an early birthday surprise during a visit to Don Corleone’s Brick Oven Pizzeria May 15. As he sat waiting for pizza, Redskins defensive tackle Kedric Golston walked in. Scott’s parents had conspired with the pizzeria’s owners to arrange for the meeting.

“This had to be one of the happiest moments of his life,” Colleen Miller said. “He thought Kedric was an incredible man … and it allowed him to know how very special he is.”

Scott’s parents feel pressed to give him as many of these moments as possible, because they worry about how many more they will have time for. Scott, of Fredericksburg, has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that causes mucous to clog his organs, including his lungs. He has to have breathing treatments three times a day and enzyme pills before each meal. Every morning and night, his parents have to pound on his chest and back and shake him while he coughs to dislodge the mucus. His treatments take 2.5 to 3 hours a day. They are vital to his life.

The median age of survival for CF patients is about 36.5, but Scott recently lost a 19-year-old acquaintance from his town to the illness.

Right now, there is no cure for CF, but the Millers aim to change that in time for Scott. They’re helping plan a June 8 walk in Fredericksburg. Colleen Miller’s Web page for the walk reports a goal of raising $10,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, with $1,094.59 pledged so far.

The Millers said CF activists struggle to get help because the disease’s sufferers look healthy.

“And then before you know it, they’re gone,” Colleen said.

Donations can be sent to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 2727 Enterprise Parkway, Suite 104, Richmond, VA 23294 (attn: Amy McCracken, for team Scottie). For information about the walk, visit www.cff.org/Great_Strides/ColleenMiller.

Pizza is indeed global, and Waleed Zarou of Sterling, Virginia, is doing his part to bring it to Kenya, Africa. After several missionary trips with his local church group, Waleed, who owns and operates Don Corleone’s Brick Pizzeria in Sterling, came back with a new sense of purpose. His mission? Help people in trouble while simultaneously teaching them how to fend for themselves.

Learning Independence
“If you visit Africa, you can’t help but notice the need,” Waleed says of the country’s crushing poverty and disease. “When you see people you know dying of AIDS, you think, ‘What can I do to help?’ ” While Waleed was busy with his church group, helping to build churches and Bible colleges, he thought, why not build businesses?

“They have so much time on their hands,” he says of the Kenyans. “There’s so much downtime because people don’t have any opportunities. They can’t be dependent on the U.S., but they can learn their own independence.” He says some might scoff at the idea of putting resources into such a foreign environment fraught with tribal warfare, but he sees it differently. “Where others see dirt, I see money,” he says. “Where they see destitution, I see opportunity.” Waleed did his homework, reading stories of business ventures that had taken place in the area. He even read African history dating back to the 1500s. “There are security issues; that’s certainly an important part of it. I’ve been visiting for eight years now and I know where not to go,” says Waleed.

After his fifth trip, Waleed began working with his brother who is a missionary and a skilled baker in the town of Eldoret. Their plan is to teach a group the baking and business skills necessary to open a bakery in town. Once open, the bakery will eventually expand into a pizzeria. Waleed plans to work through the churches (there are currently 45 congregations administered by the Calvary Temple of East Africa) and develop training programs to teach the congregants skills such as typing, accounting and running an office. “We need to teach them how to use a computer,” he says, “but also how to build one and take it apart.” Waleed foresees such training programs eventually being available online to reach the far-flung masses. “We’ll start the kids when they’re juniors in high school and bring them along until they qualify for on-the-job training.” Waleed takes teams of 20-30 people on each trip who also lend their expertise.

“I don’t have the skills necessary to give the kids a well-rounded education so I’m blessed that others will take the time to spend a few weeks in the jungle helping people to help themselves,” he says of his colleagues.

Jungle Boogie
It was in the jungle where Waleed got the idea to open a pizzeria. “I was visiting a friend of mine, another missionary,” he recalls, “and his wife told me that pizza was his favorite and that they really missed it. That gave me the idea that if I could round up the ingredients out in the countryside, where he lives, I could make pizza anywhere.” It was then that Waleed saw the idea of opening a pizzeria as a viable business to teach the Kenyans.

“I looked around at my options; saw what was available, and what was not. I found wheat flour, a little vegetable oil (though I preferred olive), tomatoes and tomato paste, and some garlic and onion at the little market in town—even oregano.” Waleed assembled a pie and instructed a small class in how to do it. He later made 10, 12-inch pies. He says the villagers gathered around him excitedly as the pies came out of the oven and he cut them on a wood table and handed them out.

“They all loved it but some didn’t like the cheese. They aren’t used to eating cheese,” says Waleed. The basic diet in the western provinces of Kenya where Waleed works is “ugali” which he describes as “like grits only more dense and made from corn. The corn they eat is basically what we feed horses in the U.S. It’s really big.”

Keeping the Dream Alive
Waleed’s next trip is in May 2008 when he will once again convene business classes and also secure a location for the bakery.

“We’re going to take this one step at a time and make sure we structure our training and implementation in such a fashion that it sets them up to succeed,” Waleed concludes. He’s taken “thinking outside the box” a whole continent further, he’s thinking outside the country. And he’s not just thinking about pizza. Ever the adventurer, he’s already dreamt up another business opportunity for the impoverished residents of Eldoret. “I’m thinking about raising chickens and starting a rotisserie chicken business. That would really do well over there.”

Kedric Golston and his team of “Pros” won the celebrity pizza eating contest Sunday at Don Corleone’s. By one slice. Professional eater Ian “The Invader” Hickman carried the team of pros, downing 32 slices, according to enthusiastic Don Corleone’s owner Waleed R. Zarou.

But Golston held his own, putting away 14 slices of pizza in 10 minutes (remember, they were double-cut, so that means he ate about 87 percent of one pie).

“He pushed himself to the limit,” Waleed told me. “He’s such a team player, he didn’t want to be the one to let his team down. That’s just so ingrained in him….I think he was glad to be done. He was concerned about going back to work the next day, all those extra carbs, but he just went for it. A true sport.”

(The third Pro, boxer Jimmy Lange, had six slices and then pledged never to eat Don Corleone’s again. Waleed told him he would be dreaming of his pizza in the middle of his training. The Joes had two teams, one with five people and the other with six, several of whom were getting themselves all fired up before the contest, determined to beat the Pros.)

“It was tremendous. It was amazing,” Waleed said. “Ian, he smoked about a 19-inch pizza in the first two minutes. I’ve never seen anything like that, it was almost like gagging.”

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About Us

The Dons' Pizza is a family-owned restaurant which has been in business since 2005. We have developed and refined recipes to offer a blend of New York and Italian style pizza. We offer the freshest ingredients including homemade mozzarella and imported Italian meats. Welcome to the family!